I recently watched Twin Peaks for inspiration for my photographs, this eery, unearthly, fantastic world that Laura lives in is a wonderfully captured corrupt utopia. 
It shows that this innocent character loved by many has a truly dark side, in fact while we are shown this different disposition we seem to love more. Dead she transcends in our love and admiration for the character.  

In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, we are shown more into the girls life, in doing this we  lose appeal for her, it is this unattainable creature that were attracted to. Having her as a living, breathing character takes away her essence. 

Dreamlike imagery is a key theme throughout David Lynch's work, its a surrealist mash up of ideas. He relies on the surrealist way of using the subconscious and imagination to provide the visual drive. This is something that I feel is extremely important within my work, for I use the abstracted disjointed images to provide stimulus for my viewers. 
Also another key theme is the use of light, a theme that is incredibly strong within my own work. 

The idea of Ellipsis is a narrative device and a basic idea in film editing. It concerns the leaving out of  selection of story which is either concealed for a narrative purpose or taken out so that the audience that participate with the telling of the story. 

Aristotle writes this quote about Tragedy, but I believe it still applies here:

“The structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole” (Poetics 8)

In my photos this idea of Ellipsis is really important to me,  the sense of space and wonder. I need the audience to interpret what they can, for without the audience my photos would be deemed meaningless. All photography needs a viewer, all art needs a viewer. 

Update: This is the set up I have eventually decided to use, I like the difference between the color and the black and white image. In the final print the left lampshade image has been edited to make the colors a little more vibrant. Just like the high contrast colors found in Anna Gaskells work. 

Final ideas for my Degree show.

Male Dominance Theory

The female identity is different according to each culture and custom, but many cultures are based on a past where men wield more patriarchal power than women, or like in the UK woman are beginning to come forth but their is still an underling current even today. 

The assumption is that men are exceedingly more dominant then woman, that they are the hierarchy of the human world. 

Men should act powerful whilst woman should act like submissive creatures, these general roles are based on norms, this starts at birth being influenced by four major agents, upbringing, mass media, peer groups and education. These are based on typical stereotypes, which we overgeneralize our attitudes, and behavior patterns to create these, just like actors within a theater.

 Femininity: “Femininity stands for a society in which social gender roles overlap: Both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life”

Masculinity: “Masculinity stands for a society in which social gender roles are clearly distinct: Men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success; women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.

Hofstede (2001), Culture’s Consequences, 2nd ed. p 297.

I want to reverse the rules and subvert the focus from the man and bring the woman into the forth-front.

Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance, Goldberg Steven. 

Junge Archetypes

Carl Jung believed that the psyche was constructed of three main components, The Ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The Archetypes are the behaviors and personalities of a person, within a person. He believed that the archetypes exist within the collective unconscious, they're innate, universal and heredity.There are many of these Archetypes but I only want to focus on the following three.   

• Animus
• Anima 
• The Shadow

"The anima is a personification of all feminine tendencies in a man's psyche ..."; thus, the animus is the personification of all masculine tendencies in a woman.”  Within my photographs the Anima has control of the light and the Animus is manifest in my work through the female form and curved shape. 

The shadow is an archetype that consists of life and sex natures, this archetype is often described as the darker side of being, representing wildness, chaos and the unknown, represented with the literal shadow and foreboding subject matter.

When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). ~Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30

Jan Smaga

                                                                       

(dog), 2007

c-print, 180 x 225 cm

Jan Smaga works with combining classical photography techniques with computer editing.  "Recreation of three dimensional architectural space onto a two dimensional image"

Although this is a different technique to me, I find the overall image incredibly interesting. These woman superimposed all over this mans body. threatening to obscure his identity. The title 'Dog' belittles the man and makes him seem no little then a sexual toy, displaying his submission to the woman littered over his back as he kneels waiting for his command. 

You could say that by displaying the female forms in such a provocative manner that it was still objectifying the woman regardless of placement, maybe it is a statement of media in general today. Nevertheless they could be saying, although you try and objectify us we as woman swarm and we are strong.

Regardless of what the meaning behind this image is, I find it incredibly strong.

Objectification of Woman

http://www.bustle.com/articles/22050-why-is-objectification-bad-the-sneaky-way-womens-bodies-are-cropped-to-pieces


 Dismemberment is a gruesome brand of objectification, and it preserves the idea that women are just the sum of their body parts. Of course, this isn't a new thing — women have been objectified on canvas for centuries. (In the early 1860s, Manet’s Olympia and The Luncheon on the Grass were the first female nudes to create a fracas merely because his naked subjects dared to bare their faces; squarely meeting the male gaze.)The Gaze has been a subject of much debate, it has also been used in feminist and Freudian contexts. Woman have been programmed to be acutely aware of the Gaze, since woman have been subjugated and treated as property throughout History.